According to the National Sleep Foundation, the first indicator of good sleep is when you are spending 85% of your time in bed actually asleep.
With the insomniacs I’ve worked with, they often believe that if they spend more time in bed their sleep quality should improve. This isn’t the case when we’ve had insomnia for long enough that our behaviour has changed and we don’t just go to sleep.
Lying in bed tossing and turning isn’t the same as sleeping well. Which leads on nicely to my next point.
Fall asleep in 30 minutes or less
Your ability to fall asleep in 30 minutes or less is the second indicator of the quality of your sleep.
The idea that falling asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow means you will sleep well, is a total myth. Sometimes falling asleep very fast is a bad sign – such as you having had too much alcohol. This doesn’t necessarily lead to a quality night’s sleep.
Falling asleep is a process and your body will take time to transition. Less than 30 minutes is the healthy norm.
Sleeping through the entire night without waking more than once
Just waking up once and then falling back to sleep easily is fine. Waking several times a night is when it becomes a problem.
Insomniacs tend to worry about waking up during the night, as they know it can mean a bad night’s sleep for them, and tiredness the next day. As they worry straight away, that tends to wake them up even more.
Becoming a little more relaxed around this helps to take away the worry. The aim isn’t to never wake up in the night, but to stay relaxed when you do wake up, so you can drift back off again.
Waking for less than 20 minutes
The fourth indicator of quality sleep is that if you do wake during the night, these periods of wakefulness, which you will hopefully stay relaxed for, last less than 20 minutes.
If you are staying awake for longer periods, according to what I see from my clients, it’s due to worrying about not getting back to sleep. So it’s really key to stay as relaxed about this as you can.
If any of these four indicators sound really familiar to you, then join my e-mail community let me know which one is causing you concern.
It is really common that people get up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. Of course, there could be an underlying medical issue, so don’t ignore that possibility. But much of the time this is about the food and drink we are taking onboard during the day.
If you are rushing about all day, not eating or drinking well then catching up on food and drink in evening, it’s not hard to see why your body needs more toilet breaks at night.
Eating and drinking better early on in the day gives your body a chance to process more of it before you head to bed for the night.
The trick to this is learning how to wrap up your day and get a sense of closure before you go to bed. This might mean having separate lists for each day, where anything that needs to be carried over to the next day is acknowledged and noted before you leave work, rather than your brain reminding you about it during the night. I know this can be so frustrating, and of course, this negative emotion is only contributing to your problem.
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